Conatus

Peter Walker Fine Art
2009

Conatus is a Latin word describing the innate vital force of a being to continue to endeavour. Descartes believed conatus was “an active power or tendency of bodies to move” while Thomas Hobbes defined it as the “will to survive”. Two and a half millennia on from its initial inception by the Stoics, conatus is a concept that is still remarkably relevant today.

Initially beginning as a very personal response to the realisation of my own utter lack of control over the social, political and environmental gravities surrounding me, the work in Conatus has become an exploration of the emotional, psychological and physical limits of individuals operating within contemporary society.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger described human existence as a process of perpetual falling. Even walking is a form of falling: we take a step, fall and catch ourselves. Individually, we are constantly embroiled in a struggle to maintain our own equilibrium through uncertainty, fear and the unknown in a world that constantly tests our stability. Economic turbulence, environmental degradation, imminent threats of war and terrorism, and shortages of resources are just several of the worldwide concerns facing us today. It is easy to feel as though we are incapable of exerting any significant control over our existences and that instead, we are being governed by forces that are ultimately indifferent to our human struggles. I am interested in the metaphorical space in which balance has been disrupted and we are faced with the choice to hold on and fight or to give up the struggle and simply let go.

The protagonists in this series are suspended in allegorical instants in which their origins and future are uncertain. In denying access to any narrative, yet suggesting that something of profound dramatic consequence has taken place, I hope to encourage the viewer to create meaning within the unresolved drama. The figures are subject to control by forces that they and we cannot see; they are fulfilling a role that is not of their own choosing but is manipulated or manufactured by something outside of our human grasp. In essence, the importance of these images lies not in the event that is taking place, but in the larger system of causation and effect in which the event is generated. These isolated figures act as abstract symbols attempting to explore the operation of a far more extensive and formidable system: the governing powers and larger machinations of life that we as individuals are eternally contending.

Rendering these images through an intensely laborious and humanly flawed process is my attempt at contesting and exposing these unseen and often frightening forces. Reduced to their rawest tonal state, these drawings are representations of disconcertingly familiar internal battles in which the figures must engage their natural inclination for self-preservation: their conatus.